Joan Mulhern's bloghttp://earthjustice.org/blogs/joan-mulhern
enWhen Polluters Attack The Clean Water Acthttp://earthjustice.org/blog/2012-october/when-polluters-attack-the-clean-water-act
<div class="field field--name-title field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><h1>When Polluters Attack The Clean Water Act</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-submitted-by field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even">By <a href="http://earthjustice.org/users/joan-mulhern" title="Joan Mulhern">Joan Mulhern</a> <span class="blog-date"> | Wednesday, October 17, 2012</span></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-share field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style">
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<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p>Clean water is one of Earth&rsquo;s most precious resources. Life&nbsp;is not possible without clean water. Thursday is the 40th anniversary of our nation&rsquo;s most important law to protect clean water and end water pollution: the Clean Water Act of 1972.</p>
<p>This is a great law whose goals include making all waters safe for fishing, swimming, and drinking, and to end the use of our lakes, rivers, streams and oceans as dumping grounds for pollution.</p>
<p>Yet some polluters are today trying to shred this fundamental law. Coal companies, paper mills, industrial facilities, gas and oil drillers, fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers and others have long been engaged in a campaign to roll back clean water safeguards.</p>
<p>Perhaps most outrageous of all are the efforts by sewage treatment plant operators and their lobbying arm&mdash;using public dollars&mdash;to tear down a basic building block of the Clean Water Act: the&nbsp;command to end the use of our waterways for the discharge of untreated human waste.</p>
<p>I know it sounds gross&mdash;and it is. Untreated sewage makes people who come into contact with it sick, and it costs enormous sums of money to clean it out of our drinking water supplies. But every year, billions of gallons of untreated sewage go into out rivers and lakes. Hello? Isn&rsquo;t this the 21st century?</p>
<p>And sewage is still being dumped into our waters?</p>
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<p>Sewage outfall in Washington, D.C. &nbsp;(David Baron / Earthjustice)</p>
<p>The EPA and clean water groups like Earthjustice have been working for years to get cities to stop violating the law by dumping sewage into waters. But even now, on the brink of the law&rsquo;s 40th anniversary, sewage agencies and their front groups are trying to further put off the day when the Clean Water Act&rsquo;s goal of ending the discharge of untreated waste becomes a reality.</p>
<p>An association now called the National Association of Clean Water Agencies (formerly the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies) and members such as D.C. Water (the public brand-name for the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (WASA)) have greenwashed their names but not cleaned up their act. They have cozied up to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and to some water advocacy groups that do not know any better to claim to support clean water. Indeed, these water utilities have implemented some of the most significant pollution control successes since the Clean Water Act was enacted&mdash;but that has happened largely thanks to citizen suits and enforcement actions compelling them to do so under court order. Now these same utilities are seeking policies to weaken and delay Congress&rsquo; command to stop raw sewage from being dumped in our waters.</p>
<p>Right here in our nation&rsquo;s capital, for example, &ldquo;D.C. Water&rdquo; is seeking to put off for another 8 years compliance with deadlines to drastically reduce the overflow of untreated sewage into the Potomac River and Rock Creek. After a long fight initiated by Earthjustice and our local partners, D.C. Water got a 20-year schedule to clean up its overflowing sewers&mdash;a long schedule to begin with, that gave the agency time to develop a plan for dealing with the cost of clean up. Now they&rsquo;re asking for an 8-year extension, and offering very little in return for the delay. They say they want time to study low impact development, but that time was already built into their 20 year implementation schedule.</p>
<p>Now that it&rsquo;s apparent D.C. Water squandered its time, the agency is complaining about the stringency of its obligations. They compare D.C.&rsquo;s relatively stringent obligations to those of other cities that have negotiated weaker requirements and longer compliance deadlines. If you ask us, the nation&rsquo;s capital should be a leader in clean water, not the leader in a race to the bottom of a sewage-filled river.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the same kind of request for delays and weaker standards is playing out all across the country, with support from lobbying associations like NACWA. If given their wish, these utilities will only succeed in unfairly saddling future generations with the cost of cleaning up our water pollution problems. This flies in the face of the Clean Water Act, which aimed to clean up sewage as much if not more than any other form of water pollution.</p>
<p>When the law was passed four decades ago, one of its chief authors, Senator Ed Muskie of Maine, asked the country:</p>
<blockquote><p>Can we afford clean water? Can we afford rivers and lakes and streams and oceans which continue to make possible life on this planet? Can we afford life&nbsp;itself?</p>
<p>Those questions were never asked as we destroyed the waters of our Nation, and they deserve no answers as we finally move to restore and renew them. These questions answer themselves. And those who say that raising the amounts of money called for in this legislation may require higher taxes, or that spending this much money may contribute to inflation simply do not understand the language of this crisis.</p>
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<p>Hooray for Senator Muskie, and the overwhelmingly bipartisan majority of the House and Senate for being visionary enough to pass a law to end water pollution. That is what we should be celebrating on the anniversary of the Clean Water Act.</p>
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Wed, 17 Oct 2012 19:02:05 +0000Joan Mulhern28894 at http://earthjustice.orgHappy 98th To Living Legend Ken Hechlerhttp://earthjustice.org/blog/2012-september/happy-98th-to-living-legend-ken-hechler
<div class="field field--name-title field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><h1>Happy 98th To Living Legend Ken Hechler</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-submitted-by field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even">By <a href="http://earthjustice.org/users/joan-mulhern" title="Joan Mulhern">Joan Mulhern</a> <span class="blog-date"> | Thursday, September 20, 2012</span></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-share field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style">
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<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p>No one who has met Ken will ever forget him.</p>
<p>I first met him in 1999 when I started at Earthjustice. Joe Lovett of Appalachian Mountain Advocates and his colleagues had just won the first-ever federal court ruling against mountaintop removal. This set off a political firestorm in West Virginia and at the U.S. Capitol. Efforts were underway to overturn the decision by exempting mountaintop removal from federal environmental laws.</p>
<p>Ken inspired the citizen activists and all of us in D.C. to fight back. He moved us with his eloquence and his sense of humor plus love of music. One of the first times I saw Ken perform was at the U.S. Capitol, where he entertained but also moved us with his rendition of &ldquo;Almost Heaven, West Virginia&rdquo; by rewriting the words to say &ldquo;Almost Level, West Virginia.&rdquo;</p>
<p>One of his mottos is &ldquo;I&rsquo;m a fighter,&rdquo; and he is. In 2010, Ken ran for U.S. Senate on a platform to stop the destruction caused by mountaintop removal. In 2009, Ken and others were arrested for civil disobedience for protesting a coal plant above an elementary school where children were forced to play in a toxic dust-covered playground.</p>
<p>This activism is just the latest in a long career of fighting for justice. Ken was the only member of Congress at the time who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma. He spent many years in Congress trying to abolish strip mining, including mountaintop removal. Much devastation and harm over the last 35 years would have been avoided if Congress had adopted his bill.</p>
<p>Ken, if there is anyone we need to be with us for another 98 years, it is you. We will keep working with you to stop mountaintop removal well before that. But we look forward to celebrating your 100th birthday in 2014, and many more to come.</p>
<p>On behalf of all Americans and people everywhere who care about justice, thank you and Happy Birthday!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.kenhechler.us/kenhechler/photos.html" target="_blank">Photos of Ken</a> and <a href="http://www.kenhechler.us/kenhechler/mtr_scourge.html" target="_blank">some of his life&rsquo;s work and history</a> fighting strip mining are online at his <a href="http://www.kenhechler.us" target="_blank">website</a>. View his Earthjustice <a href="/mountain-heroes/ken-hechler">&ldquo;Mountain Hero&rdquo; tribute</a>.</p>
<p><a href="/mountain-heroes/ken-hechler"></a></p>
<p>Ken Hechler's <a href="/mountain-heroes/ken-hechler">Mountain Hero</a> photo, created in 2010.</p>
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Thu, 20 Sep 2012 16:44:31 +0000Joan Mulhern28720 at http://earthjustice.orgHero For Those "Who Don't Have A Say"http://earthjustice.org/blog/2012-september/hero-for-those-who-don-t-have-a-say
<div class="field field--name-title field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><h1>Hero For Those &quot;Who Don&#039;t Have A Say&quot;</h1></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-submitted-by field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even">By <a href="http://earthjustice.org/users/joan-mulhern" title="Joan Mulhern">Joan Mulhern</a> <span class="blog-date"> | Monday, September 10, 2012</span></div></div></div><div class="field field--name-custom-share field--type-ds field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><div class="addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style addthis_32x32_style">
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<div class="field-item even"> <img src="http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/styles/image_800x600/public/larry-gibson_cjb_800_0.jpg?itok=JxAe5nRr" width="800" height="600" alt="Larry Gibson, watching the sun set over a decimated Kayford Mountain." title="Larry Gibson, watching the sun set over a decimated Kayford Mountain." /><div class="field field--name-field-caption field--type-text-long field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p>Larry Gibson (1946&ndash;2012), watching the sun set over a decimated Kayford Mountain.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field--name-field-image-credit field--type-text field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even">Chris Jordan-Bloch / Earthjustice</div></div></div></div>
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<div class="field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden"><div class="field__items"><div class="field__item even"><p>The fight to end mountaintop removal will not stop until mountaintop removal stops, but yesterday we lost one of the most beloved heroes and leaders of the movement. <a href="/mountain-heroes/larry-gibson">Larry&nbsp;Gibson</a>, the Keeper of the Mountains, died on Kayford Mountain, a sacred place he fought for three decades to save. He recalled how, 30 years ago, some people told him that the destruction caused by mountaintop removal and strip mining would be &ldquo;fixed&rdquo; in six months.</p>
<p>I first met Larry in 1999 after just joining Earthjustice when Judge Haden in West Virginia ruled, for the first time ever by a federal court, that mountaintop removal was illegal. A huge political and Congressional fight ensued, especially over the Clean Water Act. Larry's effort in Appalachia and around the country&mdash;reaching out to young people, members of Congress, non-profit groups and others&mdash;was an inspiration. He&nbsp;never gave up.</p>
<p>Not long ago, he said:</p>
<blockquote><p>I first set out to save my mountain, Kayford Mountain. Now, I fight to save all mountains and all the people living in them. This movement can&rsquo;t be about just me. It can&rsquo;t be about just this mountain. It has to be about the people who don&rsquo;t have a say, like our children and grandchildren.</p>
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<p>That pretty much sums it up. Larry fought for his family and Kayford, but also for everyone living with the abuses caused by mountaintop removal and was a national figure known to practically everyone around the country opposed to mountaintop removal.</p>
</p>
<p>Larry Gibson at Kayford Mountain, earlier this year.</p>
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Mon, 10 Sep 2012 22:43:35 +0000Joan Mulhern28227 at http://earthjustice.org